Tutorial: The Best Wet Shaving Soap Recipe

Shaving soap. It’s a big deal in the world of wet shavers, and now, having made it, I can see why.

I ran into some issues when I first started to research shaving soap. Stearic acid is considered to be one of the best ingredients to use at high percentages in a shaving soap – the stearic helps bind the bubbles together thickly, creaming a thick dense foam, rather than large bubbles.

But, stearic acid is palm-derived, and obviously if my business is entirely palm oil free, I can’t use palm-derived stearic.

I was at a bit of a loss until, while researching other things, someone pointed out that Soy Wax is amazing in soap, and did we know that soy wax was actually 87% stearic acid?

BINGO.

So I set about testing recipes, substituting soy wax for stearic acid. After a few okay attempts, I have finally landed on this wet shaving soap recipe, and I honestly believe it could be the best shaving soap around.

The Best Wet Shaving Soap Recipe

This wet shaving soap recipe is a hot process recipe using dual lye. Please make sure you’re familiar with the processes of soapmaking before attempting this.

I used individual oval moulds for this soap. It is more than full water, so while it is ready immediately, you should leave it to sit for a fortnight, in my opinion.

I used Soapmaker 3 to calculate the lye ratios – this recipe uses 60% KOH (Potassium Hydroxide) and 40% NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide), but you can use any cream soap calculator. Saffire Blue’s seems good.

Soap Formula Used

325g Soy Wax (11.46 oz)

195g Coconut Oil (6.97 oz)

65g Cocoa Butter (2.3 oz)

65g Castor Oil (2.3 oz)

796g Water (28 oz)

44g Sodium Hydroxide (1.55 oz)

73g Potassium Hydroxide (2.61 oz)

Extra Additives

.2g of tussah silk (small pinch) (optional)

10g Sodium Lactate

20g Bentonite Clay

Note: Bentonite clay is considered to be the best because it is slipperier than other clays BUT… please look at the INCI of your clay when you buy it. Often Bentonite is the main component in a lot of cosmetic clays. Kaolin will also work if you have it, and not bentonite, but bentonite is my preference. It also tends to be hydrophobic, so mix it with a little of your oils.

Fragrance

15g (.5 oz) of fragrance oil – I used Country Spice from Kody’s Candles at just over 2% weight of oils. I wanted a light smell.

PREP WORK

Split your cocoa butter into two equal portions and set one portion aside to be added after the cook. This is your superfat.

Weigh your oils and clay, and leave them to melt in a slow cooker (crock pot). Soy wax may take a little while to melt, but it’s okay, hang in there.

In a lye safe jug, weigh out your water and add your finely chopped tussah silk and your sodium lactate. Weigh out both of your lyes (NaOH and KOH) and add them to the water, stirring until dissolved as usual.

Potassium Hydroxide FlakesSoy Wax, weighed out and ready for meltingSolid Oils Ready For MeltingStarting to happen!

GETTING STARTED

When your oils are melted, add the lye solution and begin to stick blend, stopping to stir with a spatula often. It will take a while to come to trace – I stick blend, then stir, then leave it alone for a few minutes, then repeat. Don’t worry if it starts to separate, a quick stick blend will bring it back together.

Once you hit trace, put a wet towel over the crock pot, put the lid back on, and leave it alone to cook.

Adding the lye water. Dual lye keeps the soap softer, allowing for easier lathering with a shaving brush. I’ve used 60% KOH and 40% NaOH here.Separation of oils and water, right before the soap hit trace. My mix was very foamy at this point. I need a new stickblender I think.

COOKING

Hot process is a lot of fun, but requires you to pay attention! Keep an eye on your soap and try to prevent yourself from stirring it too often. The goal of the full water is to give you soap at the end which is smooth and manageable.

Zap test the soap. If it zaps, leave it to cook a little longer. As soon as it’s zap free, you can melt and add your cocoa butter.

Your batter should still be fairly liquid at this stage. Mine was a little lumpy where I stirred the slightly-more-cooked edges through. I wasn’t aiming for true vaseline stage, because I wanted my soap to still be fluid.

Wet tea towel over the slow cooker to hopefully keep the batter fairly fluid.Slightly lumpy, but zap free. I could have stick blended it smooth at this stage, but I didn’t want to push it to go any thicker. Zap was clear in all spots.Adding the cocoa butter superfat. You can see the slight skin forming on the soap. I just hand mixed like mad.All stirred through and ready for moulding.

MOULDING

Once your superfat is mixed in, you can turn your crock pot off and leave the soap to cool down a little before adding the fragrance. You don’t want it too cool, however, otherwise it will thicken up and make moulding harder.

Using a spoon, spoon it into individual moulds, or shaving soap tins.

If you’re using tins, please make sure that your tins are stainless steel, just in case. JUST IN CASE.

Leave it somewhere safe and dry to cool.

Because I used more than full water, I’ll leave these shaving soaps to cure for 2-3 weeks before use. Hot process soaps technically don’t need curing, but I honestly believe all soap is better when it’s a few weeks old.

LATHER

For best results, I recommend using a shaving brush and bowl to lather this soap up. It gives amazing lather, very similar to shaving cream, which is stable and thick.

This wet shaving soap gives a beautiful creamy lather.

The Best Shaving Soap recipe is an original formula created by Veronica Foale for Modern Soapmaking. It is palm-free, and uses a 7% superfat. To make this recipe vegan-friendly, omit the Tussah Silk. Feel free to share!

Veronica Foale is a soap maker, writer, mother, gardener, and small business owner. She lives in the Southern Midlands of Tasmania, tucked away at the bottom of Australia. Veronica owns Veronica Foale Essentials, an artisan soap making and skincare business. In her spare time she reads a lot of books, daydreams about soap batter swirls, and eats chocolate.

Connect with Veronica:

Reader Interactions

What Folks Are Saying

Thank you SO much for this! All my soap is vegetarian and palm-free and I’ve really struggled with a viable option to stearic. I’d like to see how this works with my existing recipe. Do you think you could do a straight 1:1 sub of soy wax for stearic acid?

Did you ever make this shaving soap using stearic acid instead of soy wax? I tried running Veronica’s recipe through Saffire Blue’s calculator, replacing the soy wax with stearic acid, but the water amount showed the amount in ml. not grams. I would like to make this soap but am getting discouraged using the soap calculators.

Hi Veronica,
I would love to try this recipe but when I put it in my soapcalc it gives me different amount of water, only 222g instead of your amount. Why do you use so much water please?
Thank you!
Petra

Hey, Patricia,
Keep in mind that tins are rated by volume (fl ounces) rather than weight (ounces). However, solid/semi-solid soap is sold (in the US) by weight. A 4 oz container may or may not hold 4 ounces *by weight*.

If you calculate the lye to oils correctly, your soap should finish it’s saponification in 2-3 days tops. The only reason for curing soaps is to let them harden (water evaporating}. Unless your calculations are way off – the soap process should be done within a week at the most – hot process soaps are ready as soon as they cool off – as do soaps that go through gel stage. It is a misconception that curing for weeks makes soap ‘milder’ or less alkaline. As I said – if you calculated correctly, there should be no lye left after 2-3 days – a week at the most.

Kenna,
A friend shared your posting on shaving soap. I don’t have a problem with Palm, and I happen to have lots of Stearic Acid. I don’t have Soy Wax. Can I use the formula you shared and just substitute Stearic Acid for the Soy Wax amount?
Thank you,
Marley

The stearic acid – or in my case, soy wax (87% stearic) – is what binds all the bubbles together into a dense tight foam. Without the stearic component, the soap lather won’t be as dense, or protective. I really do recommend using high stearic in a shaving soap.

Hi Veronica, love your soaps, I’d like to give this a try, unfortunately where I live there is no soy wax but I’m able to get stearic acid instead, how could I substitute the soy wax for the SA in this case? By the way I live in Latin America and we don’t have orangutans, thanks

Hello. This is wonderful, as I’ve thinking about making a shaving soap but everything I found has had a palm product or two. But the next question is where can one find reasonable but chic shaving cream tins or bowls? I’m going to try this recipe as soon as I can find nice bowls….

Thanks for this alternative recipe. I made shaving soap about a month ago using stearic acid, and it took a ton!
Also, the soap still feels slightly sticky on top. I hope the soy wax produces a drier, harder soap.

I’ve found that it does, but how hard the bar is will really depend on what ratios of KOH to NaOH you use. Maybe play around with that? I’ve really liked the results with 40% NaOH and 60% KOH – I get a bar which feels hard, but is still soft enough to load a shaving brush with easily.

Thank you! Thank you! I had been kicking this around on the shave soap board for a while & have not had time to really sit and experiment with it. I hate that I can’t find stearic that is palm free but again yay!!!!!!

Hi,
Thanks for your generosity in sharing your recipe. I have cold processed a number of different shaving recipes. They have all been nice and very hard and moisturizing but have all lacked that thick lather. My question is whether you can cold process your recipe? Or must it be hot processed? I am not a fan of hot process and wonder if I can get around it or not. I would like to give your recipe a try. Thanks again.

I haven’t tried to CP this recipe, and I’m not sure how well it would work – soy wax accelerates trace quite quickly and pure stearic at 50% would be unworkable in CP.

But if you used full water and worked fast, I can’t see why it couldn’t be attempted! If you do, let me know? I’d like to know how it goes, and I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to try it for myself for a while.

Soyawax is great in CP soap. You just gotta get the right one. there are like 6 different main types of soyawax. If youve used beeswax even at 1% in CP or even the dreaded and challenging candelilla (WHICH I LOVE!) then soyawax is just another of those challenges. Mix at high temp and dump in individual containers with plastic wrap followed immediately to create flat surface. Im going to try the soft soya wax used for massage candles because this doesnt actually harden. Now my 2 cents on this palm thing, sorry if i highjack. But i love my palm recipes. I dont see what the big hype is. Just another trend if you ask me. My palm is sustainable and EVERYTHING we do damages the earth. I cant believe people are so stuck up on palms!!! BUT they dont see their everyday minuscule routines they think is so important is actually doing more damage then stupid palm trees and apes. LMAO! PLASTIC NEVER GOES AWAY and its being used disgustingly. The media throws anything in peoples faces to redirect their attention. As long as it doesnt point to the DuPonts who MADE SURE cannabis (that can replace every single textile making it biodegradable eco friendly and can also replace fossil fuels, you know the blood of the earth you pump in your car while worrying about a palm tree! PPFFTTT!) would always be illegal so plastic can overcome. So next time you think going palm free is helping the environment as you use and throw away your plastics, or fill another lip balm tube with crappy balm, think about the plastic. The stuff that isnt organic. The stuff the earth can never come back from. The stuff you throw in the recylcing bin like a sugar pill placebo. you think it makes a difference when most recycling plants end up throwing it away because they cannot recycle every piece of plastic or bags. How about people demand that the corporations start to fund a recycling program for the poison theyre pumping out and selling as we fund our deaths???? Like the plastic island. How dare soapmakers want to go palm free.. go plastic free… ignorance is the highest form of child/earth abuse. ugh..im done. thanks for listening.

Thank You! my thoughts exactly when I see people drinking out of water bottles and using plastic lotion containers at craft fairs but then they are so concerned with not using palm to save the earth!!!

Thanks for such detailed instructions! Something I’ve wanted to make for awhile.
I think I missed something, though. If one is palm-free, yet soy wax is 87% stearic acid (derived from palm), how does that mean I can stay palm free using it?
Thanks for the great info!!

Any chance you know of another wax other than soy that is high in Stearic and palm free? Yes, I am being lazy and do not wish to research. 🙂 Soy is generally a GMO product, and I am a GMO free company.

Is it possible to get a recipe with kokum butter from you? I live in Norway and want to make a shaving soap for my bf, but don’t want to use stearic acid and can’t get my hands on the right type of soy wax. I happen to have kokum butter, so I got so exited reading your comment 🙂 Please let me know.

I just went and researched the wax I’m using, and it tests GMO free – they’re very clear about the process the wax goes through. I’m not sure how comfortable you would be using something which started out GMO however.

Double check with your supplier. Using kokum as a straight substitute will not render as creamy of a lather (I use more Kokum in my recipe than Veronica used Soy Wax in this recipe), but it’s the closest you can get. This goes for any other substitution.

Jo you are super duper
I love your palm free article. I originate from a palm growing area devoid of endengered animals but, have some customers who are sensitive to the Palm issue. Your recipe would be a welcome addition to my product line. It was nice being part of the Master batching class at the Nyah studio.

Hi Akosua! Thanks for visiting, I’m glad you enjoyed the class at Nyah studio – I had a ton of fun teaching it. 🙂 Most of the tutorials here on Modern Soapmaking are palm free, this particular one was contributed by Veronica. You can see who is contributing an article by looking at the Author bio at the end of each post. 😉 Thanks for coming by!

This sounds good. I’ve never tried HP soap but I will bookmark the page to come back to. Could I ask which soy wax you used? I have three different soy waxes (I make candles) so wouldn’t want to use the wrong one.

Is 28oz of water correct for your recipe? I tried it in the saffire blue calculator and got just over 8oz. I know there is a range, but 28 just seems like a huge range for the amount of oil. I am unfamiliar with using both lye’s together, but I have been seeing a lot of it lately. I’ve only ever done CP and an excited to learn something new.

I used water as 45% of the recipe to keep the batter fluid and workable through the cook. It looks like a lot, but it will give you smooth batter you can mould almost like CP batter. The sodium lactate will help with hardening and unmoulding the next day, and then a week or two on a curing shelf to lose extra water before you sell/give them away. You can use them immediately, but I like the feel of the lather best after a week or two.

Hi there,
Thanks for the lovely tutorial….now is there a place where I can learn how to use the lye calculator for this dual lye type of soap….I do not have cocoa butter on hand and really want to make this soap but am afraid things will be off If I just do a straight sub for Kokum of Illipe butter which I have….thanks a bunch!!

Hey Veronica, gorgeous to see you here. Have been making shave soaps for a while using Shea/ Castor & Clay CP and felt inspired to attempt HP today after seeing this marvelous blog. Have used higher percentages of Cocoa & Shea Butter instead of Soy for similar reasons (GMO) . Will get hubby to try it in a couple of days.

As an experienced DE wet shaver my concern is the clay additive. Most commercial premium shaving soaps and creams (I.e. Poraso, Arko, Cella, Mitchell’s, Williams, etc) do not use clays for slip as they add unnecessary dulling to the blade. With your experience I wonder you might refine your recipe. Kudos to all your efforts. Please let me know your thoughts.

I tend to agree with this about clay, Ernie, but I do know several wet shavers (including a couple who also formulate & sell) who enjoy shaving soaps that contain bentonite and/or french green clay. I think it comes down to personal preference – replacing blades in a GSR/sharpening a blade slightly more often vs. snagging a little extra slip (& the purported benefits of clay in skincare) with every shave.

This looks awesome! My other half buys that shaving stuff from The Art of Shaving, and its sooooo expensive! Any idea how long you had to cook this for? I don’t usually HP since my soap lab isn’t located at my home and I have to sit and wait for it, awful I know, haha. Thanks so much for the tutorial!

I’d love to try making this. My first attempt at shaving soap was basically a CP recipe with bentonite clay added. Pretty useless for shaving but nice in the shower. I’ve gathered together my ingredients for this but struggled a little with the soy wax. My usual supplier of soaping stuff stocks a number of different types so I went for Eco Soy CB135 which was approved for skin use and says it is pure soy with no additions. I contacted the supplier, who contacted their wholesaler, who contacted the manufacturer (!) re the percentage of steric acid. The answer came back that they didn’t provide this information but that it would be less than 5%. That seems to be counter to soy wax being high in steric. Still going to go ahead and try a small test batch but not sure how well it will work. How crucial is the steric acid?

Just something to think about ” 93 percent of soy is genetically modified.”
Here is an article to just consider when negating palm. Many would also argue that the women who cultivate the massive amounts of shea butter are like slaves but in many areas it saves their lives. I am not posting to get into a debate or to down your soap in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM The shave soap looks awesome but I wonder about the soy – any other suggestions besides soy or palm?

As mentioned in the comments above, you can also look to Kokum butter, which is what I use for the same reasons. Veronica was able to source GMO-free soy wax that she was comfortable using. 🙂 If you choose to sub palm-derived stearic acid or the soy wax, you will need to tweak the formula to reach a higher stearic acid content (Kokum, for example, has almost half the amount of stearic as soy.) This article might help in wrangling the fatty acids: http://www.modernsoapmaking.com/the-most-popular-fatty-acid-profiles-in-soapmaking/

IMO, you need at least 30% (preferably higher) stearic acid in your total recipe’s fatty acid profile to make a killer shaving soap. Hope that helps.

Hi,
That looks so creamy! But I was wondering if we must use both lyes. Can we just use NaOH? Even if it won’t be quite as creamy?
So, I’d redo the recipe in the lye calculator just with NaOH and do all the rest as described. Would that work?
Thanks!

Need help. I new to using a cream soap calc and tried doing this recipe but substituting the soy wax with stearic acid as I have a ton of it on hand. The calculator also told me to add glycerin…Any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi! I tried making this soap yesterday. I think I went wrong somewhere. I followed exactly the measures you had, but when the soap batter was cooking on high in the crock pot, it ended up getting super lumpy and unworkable very fast, around 15 minutes later. It was still zapping. In order to obtain workable soap, I had to pour in two full glasses of water (I could not say how much in mL) and stick blend it. I did omit the sodium lactate. Is this what went wrong? How long should I have left it to cook? And as for superfatting with cocoa butter, do you put in the whole amount in the lye calculator or divide it? Thank you!

Hello i’d love to try this recipe and was wondering if I could sub the soy wax for steric acid instead? If so how much steriac acid would I use ? I don’t have soy wax on hand and it’s very inconvenient for me to get it but I have steriac acid on hand and can obtain it easily. Please advise thank you.

Thank you Veronica for the very prompt answer. How much steric acid in ounces would I use for your recipe ?? I’m not good with percentages yet, getting there but was never any good at math LOL Thank you so much for sharing I can’t wait to try this !! 🙂

Hello, I have some doubts:
1.- Why do you separe cocoa butter in two pieces? in the recipe I only find one reference to add it.
2.- What are the estimated times in crock pot? just to have an idea since I never did the zap testing.
3.- Is the Lactosa really important? I read it could give allergies.
4.- Is it straightforward or it’s easy to fail obtaining an usable shaving soap?

Hi I made yhis recipe this morning it looked like yours still liquid like a cake batter I poured it in molds but worry it wont set up so I can un mold it. Also got a little on my table I wiped it up with my hand an ran it under the water it didn’t soap up does it take time to soapafie. I did not do the zap test due to the consistency. Thanks Lori

Hi Veronica. I am very interested in trying this shaving soap. Was thinking of purchasing a 3 quart crock pot. My question is why do you use both
Potassium hydroxide to as well as sodium hydroxide? Would this recipe not work with just trying sodium hydroxide?

I have made this several times now and everyone loves it. I have a question about a paservative. I read somewhere in a post that one should be used in double lye soaps do you find this to be true?
Thanks
Lori

Hello,
I would love to try this recipe, but I can`t find sodium lactate where I live (Romania), only in big quantities (25 kg). Can you point me some suppliers for the sodium lactate? Is it liquid or solid? Can I substitute it with something else?
Thank you very much!

Hi, I hope this comment didn’t already get made- I tried reading thru them all and I just didn’t have enough time. My question is about the tussah silk. It’s not something I’ve used before but it sounds wonderful! I looked it up and I couldn’t find a whole lot of info on it pertaining to soap making. And also I found silk amino acids, powder, and peptides. What is the difference and will it make a difference in my finished soaps depending on what kind I use? Love ur posts btw, it took me awhile to realize how many of ur posts I kept referring back to that we’re urs. Great job!!

Hi, I have a question re. using tins:
You say “If you’re using tins, please make sure that your tins are stainless steel, just in case. JUST IN CASE.” It’s quite hard sourcing stainless steel as opposed to aluminium so I’m wondering why? Just in case of what? I’m intrigued.
Thank you.

I left this question under an old post but thought it might have gotten lost. I was wondering if it is possible to substitute equal parts of Hydrogenated Soybean Oil aka new Crisco for the soy wax?
I’m also wondering how this can be done CP method?

I’ve found soy wax that is used for making candles. No mention of soaps. Would this work? I wasn’t sure if there are different grades of soy wax (never heard of it before)
I’m excited to try this ! Thank you

Hello. Where is a good place to get soy wax with that stearic acid content? I purchased some off amazon and tried your recipe. The result though wasn’t the same. The lather is t as thick as it should. More light with bubbles and it dissipates rather fast. I asked the seller of te content and the reply was that there is no stearic acid content in the soy wax. Could this be the reason?

I used the water recommended in the recipe and it turned out great. My shaving soap shrunk quite a bit as it cured which didn’t make it look very good in the containers I used. Should I use less water to avoid soap shrinking?

I have been trying to make my own brush on shaving cream for a few months, all failures because they don’t lather. This opened my eyes immediately! My problem now is that I am unfamilisr with soap making, so where would you recommend a beginner start so that I can work up to this?

I would recommend you start off making a small cold process soap batch a few times. This will help to familiarize you with the basic concepts of soap making. There are tons of videos on YouTube that can teach you everything you need to know.

Interested to know how you label the soy wax in your soap (as I don’t think, or can’t find, an inci term for saponified soy wax) …I’d usually label my soaps as containing sodium cocoate, etc.

But thank you for your work! It makes a lovey soap.

And on Palm free glycerin…your comment was from last year I think, so you may already know this, if not, there’s definitely someone here (could be Aussie Soap Supplies, but don’t hold me to that!) who has palm-free glycerin 🙂

This recipe didn’t work for me. The dual lye solution cooled off way too quickly while the oils remained hot. I cooled the oils down and raised the temperature of the lye. At this point I didn’t trust it not to overflow, so I mixed it in the sink, then slowly brought the crockpot temperature back up. It took forever to get to trace. After even longer it finally got to the mashed potatoes stage, then it quickly seized up into an unworkable mass that was still heavy with lye. I added my melted Shea reserve at this point, then more castor oil, then more water… I’ve been cooking this soap for over 3 hours and it’s still unworkable. I don’t know what went wrong but I’m about to give up and throw it out.😥

Thank you Kenna and Veronica. Thanks for the great soaping platform and a great tutorial. It is a great starting point on the subject. I can see myself going down the HP shaving soap path for a long time to come.
Here is a link to my 2015 blog post outlining my research on the qualities of soy wax and what it brings to soaping. The article specifically mentions CP soaping and the information transfers easily to HP soapmaking as well in the case of shaving soap where it really shines as a great source of palm free stearic acid.https://soapinthecity2.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/soy-inspired-soy-wax-in-cp-soap-what-does-it-bring-to-the-party/
The blog is about sharing my experiences and experiments in as scientific and engaging way as possible.

I just tried making this but the soap got really thick towards the end. I was able to scoop it into a mold and let it sit for 24 hrs. It’s firm enough to unmold and cut but the bars are REALLY soft. They pass the zap test. Will they harden in a couple of weeks or do I scrap them/melt them back down and remold? I washed my hands with some of the trimmings and it leaves them really soft and smooth! If they would harden I’m sure they’d make a great bar for shave soap.

I do not have hot process experience to make this shaving soap and would need to make a cold process shaving soap. I see where melt and pour shaving soap is used by several soap makers and sold as a shaving soap with the addition of some essential oils and maybe some shea butter, etc. I do not want to make a melt and pour shave soap, and wonder if there is a standard usage rate for using stearic acid in cold process soap to get the lather close enough to the lather in a traditional melt and pour shave soap? I do have kokum butter and wonder if a combination of the kokum butter and stearic acid would be a good work-a-round? Thank you!

Recipes that are high in stearic acid can be difficult to cold process as they will accelerate extremely quickly, which is the main reason hot process is used most of the time. It’s not that it can’t be done, but that we try to ensure that most soapmakers will see success with a recipe. Hope that helps!

So could you use a combination of the two? Hot process it then once it goes to a mild trace then just mold it and let it age like a cold process?

We are using goats milk which makes the recipe a bit more difficult. We typically add lye to frozen milk to prevent scalding, however, due to the large amount of milk required it got very cold. I think that’s where I messed up, adding the very cold milk/lye to the very warm oils.

So I was thinking of doing the lye/milk first, letting it come to room temp, then doing the oils, adding it all and bringing it to trace, then molding it and letting it cure.

I’m from australia and am reluctant to try this after reading all the comments about the cook time and the differences in the lye calc. I looked up sapphire blue lye calc and am not sure what to enter for lye discount, or to answer yes or no to “is this a cream soap” no mater what I put the lye amounts do not match the ones in your recipe, so I think I will wait a bit longer before trying this one. I want to make a good shaving soap for my husband. Also I have some soy wax but it is a blend with some paraffin in it, not sure if it will be ok, as its not 100%

HI – ive only made 1 batch of CP 100% coconut oil soap and it worked out quite well from the look of it. I have a few questions, can i make this in a regular pot on the stove? Also, i am really struggling to find sodium lactate in my part of south africa, is there any substitute?

Hello,
I am a bit confused as to how you reached your water amount? When I enter the info into the dual lye calculator that you have used I get very different amounts all round!. I have never used a dual lye calculator before so am I doing something wrong?

Due to different crock pots using different temperatures, it varies, Jimi. The tutorial gives information about how to check it throughout the cook. Keep an eye on it, and make notes for next time. 🙂 With different crock pots, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. Veronica stated in the comments that she cooked hers for an hour.

Thank you! Been 45 minutes. I tried the zap thing for the first tike ever and I don’t think I felt anything. Was a little paranoid. I’m trying to keep the towel on it. I thought an hour was standard but I haven’t made soap like this yet.

Just looking at this recipe and I was wondering in the photo where you say “Solid Oils Ready For Melting” the photo shows yellow pellet wax like beeswax. Which oil is this or is it beeswax?
thanks!!
Bea

I want to make a small batch of this to see how my husband likes it, but can’t find a lye calculator online that will allow me to put in both lyes. How much does this make? And how would you recommend adjusting it?

Also, How would it effect the lather of this bar to leave the sodium lactate out?

Alicia,
There is a calculator for duel lye linked in the article. Looking at the ingredients, I see that it uses just a bit over 23 ounces of oils, so that tells you an approximate yield. I wouldn’t recommend adjusting it because extremely small batches can be tricky, especially with hot process.

I followed this recipe exactly as written, even though I was scratching my head at the proportions. Took forever to come to trace and was very liquidly, gooey at the end, but it came out perfectly! Added Eucalyptus EO and a touch of wintergreen EO. The foamy lather is impressive.

Just made this yesterday and enjoyed the process so much!! I generally make HP soap with raw cow’s milk so I am somewhat familiar with the process. I’m going to try a batch with milk at some point and I will let you know how it turns out!

Question: I’m dying to see if it lathers like yours…can I try it this soon? I set aside an uglier one to play with.
Thanks for the great tutorial and info!

Thanks for this recipe. I have almost all the ingredients. I am just waiting for my fragrance oils to arrive.

I have one question which I may have missed in the comments, but do you have this recipe in percentages? I am not sure I want to make such a big batch atm and don’t want to mess up the input into a calculator.

I am relatively new to this and haven’t got my head round the maths yet 🙂

This batch is under two pounds of oils and many recipes, particularly those high in stearic, can get unmanageable if scaled down too far. While you can certainly experiment, you might have better luck making this one as is.

I did make it btw and it is lovely. I messed up a bit with water but still produced a fab soap. I know wher to improve next time but I def ended up with enough soap to last a lifetime. I have told all the men in my life to expect a round of it for Christmas lol! I have more wax on the way to make a girl version 😉

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